The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1887-01-08
THE LAW OF PROGRESS.
BY Rev. J. B. SAKE.
Fort Scott, Kan.)

(F0rt Scott, kan.)
Slow development from germ, and
gradual progress upward and onward to
the highest attainable perfection, seems
to be the great law Of the universe,
physical and moral. 1t is now called
evolution" but Herbert Spencer was
by no means the first to recognize the
existence of this great law. He only
called it by another name, and called
attention to its apparent universally.
A law is nothing in itself. 1t is not a
force. 1t has no ability to execute it.
self. A statute law is only way or
method in which the governing power
acts; and divine law is simply the
manner in which the divine power acts
in creating and governing the universe.
The law Of progress is one of these
methods, or one of the aspects in which
we view the works of God.
The towering oak of the forest is not
created in all its magnificent proper
tions and grandeur at once, but is grad
ually developed through years or centu-
ries of growth, from small germ in
the acorn. In the wheat plant we have
first the blade, then the ear, then the
full corn in the ear. Millions of years,
if not of ages, were employed in prepar-
ing the earth for the habitation of man,
during all which immense period there
was constant advancement from the
lower to the higher, from the less to the
more perfect. AS the geologist reads
the rocks of which the crust of the earth
is composed, from the bottom upwards,
like the successive leaves of an immense
book, he finds in the lowest-the his
tory of the earliest periods-the records
of the lowest forms of organic life; and
as he ascends in the series, he finds
greater and greater perfection, until at
last, at the close Of the tertiary period,
he reaches man, the Lord of Creation,
the most perfect of the Creators works,
at the summit of the scale, where the
physical blends with and disappears in
the spiritual mortal in the immor-
tai.
From man, backward in time and
downward in the geological scale, and
in the scale of being, all is physical
and mortal. Forward and upward, all
is spiritual and immortal. Is it possi-
BILE any man can bring himself to be-
lieve that the great law of progress,
which is seen to have been inoperatiof,
and to have been the prime fact in Gre
alton, through all the past countless
ages of the earth's history, producing
at last, after discarding thousands of
inferior types, SO perfect a being as
man-that this most important of all
laws will be abrogated just when it has
reached a result promising such glori-
Gus consequences ? All beneath may
be said to be of no value. Will infinite
wisdom and goodness repeal the law so
soon as it has produced a result worthy
of it, and of him ? Just as the glori-
Gus possibilities of its endless action
begin to appear, as though on purpose
to defeat his own purpose and will ?
Is that like God?
What mole-eyed philosophy is this
That the All-wise will abandon the great
purpose which he has so steadily pur-
sued through millions of centuries, just
on the threshold of the most glorious
success Just when the object he has
so long and SO steadily pursued is about
to be attained ! Working through un-
numbered ages to produce splendid
result, and then, as it were, in mere
childishness and unreasoning anger,
dashing it to pieces, or Transforming it
into a thing of horror, as soon as pro-
duced That's your idea Of infinite wis
dom Most sublime philosophy Most
profound reasoners these learned the
ologians They are the men, and wis
dom will die with them
Such philosophy might do in the
night of heather darkness, where it
originated; but how does it look in the
light of the nineteenth century 1t
might answer for pagan priests and
their barbarous people, but how would
it become the mouth of him who spake
as never man spake, or the ears of his
enlightened followers ? We might, per-
haps, expect to find it in the Koran, or
the Vedas, or the Scandinavian Edda,
or any other heather sacred books, (and
you will be sure to find it in them ally,
but what say you to foisting it into the
gospel, and setting it, like Gulliyer's
Old Man of the Sea, upon the shoul-
ders of Christianity, to cling to its neck
like Victor Hugo's devil fish, to its
victim until it strangled it's life and
power What think you of that {?
Again, man himself is developed from
a germ. Naturalists inform US that
during his fetal life there is progress
sive development through the forms of
the lower animals, from the fish up to
the highest mammal; and then he is
born at the bottom of the human scale.
Next below baby, it has been said, is
nothing and as regards human char